1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to coil winding machines, and more particularly, to automatic coil winding machines utilizing a rotating winding head for winding arrays of coils.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Automatic coil winding machines are known. Such machines generally employ one or more coil winding heads that may be stepped in a predetermined sequence to wind each of the individual coils in an array. Such machines generally employ a winding head that describes a circular orbit around the coil being wound regardless of the shape of the coil. When noncircular coils are wound, automatic tensioning devices are provided to take up the slack in the wire that may occur as various portions of the coil are traversed.
While the prior art machines provide a way automatically to wind an array of coils, the circular winding motion tends to limit the compactness of the array when non-circular coils are wound. This occurs because the diameter of the circle described by the winding head must be large enough to accommodate the longest cross sectional dimension of the coil. As a result, adjacent rows of coils must be spaced far enough apart to permit the winding head to pass between adjacent coils during the winding operation. The last mentioned requirement causes otherwise unnecessarily large spacing between the coils of the array, particularly when coils having a high aspect ratio cross section are used.